Wednesday, December 17, 2008

This review is going to be rather tricky to write, because Casual Gameplay Escape is one of those puzzle games where much of the puzzle is in figuring out what the actual puzzle is, so I'll try to write this without giving too much away.

In Casual Gameplay Escape, it's just you, a room, and eight puzzles. You're tossed into the room with extremely little in the way of introduction or explanation. Solving all eight puzzles will allow you to escape the room and win the game. Each of the eight puzzles is straightforward enough once you figure out the rules and objective, but since these are not given to you, figuring them out requires some clever logic and experimentation. (Indeed, a couple of the puzzles I'm still not quite precisely sure of the rules, but we figured them out well enough to make our way to the solution.)

Anyway, the quality of the puzzles is obviously the main yardstick for whether this is a good game or not, and the puzzles here are generally solid. Each of them requires a completely different way of thinking, and none of them is either too easy or too difficult. (Though the solution to one puzzle was perhaps slightly unfairly tricky.) The interface is pretty simple -- you don't need to do much maneuvering between the puzzles, though it's still a little more complex than just "select a puzzle and do it".

Graphically, the game is of high quality; both the drawings and the animation are solid. In the background is not quite music, rather just a loop of atmospheric sounds which lend a vaguely creepy air to the proceedings; it's effective atmosphere, at least. The sounds get a little repetitive, especially that one clunk that you get when you're clicking something (you'll see what I mean soon enough).

Overall, I'd say Casual Gameplay Escape is an excellent game. It kind of makes me sad that walkthroughs for this type of game are so easily available, because really the challenge is in figuring out everything yourself (which we did). It'll make you think, but in a good way. Give it a try.